This blog was once about my 40K Eldar army, modeled in conflict with the Tau. It has grown into my hobby home on the internet. Basically that means anything I do from a gaming standpoint is written about here.

Friday, May 3, 2013

There
is an awful lot I love about this game. I started writing this article about the aspects that really resonate with me and realized the list was actually fairly long. Apparently I have a lot to say, which should not be as surprising to people as it seems to be. Even my lovely wife said it was strange reading my blog and seeing me write about an emotional attachment to a game. To be honest, this game has become an important part of my free time enjoyment, not really leaving much space for other games. I play competitively and I play casually, both of which I enjoy a great amount. Malifaux is my Tuesday Game Night mistress, and I have even been able to travel to play the game. I have recieved a series of comments from various sources including email, blog comments, and twitter and I really appreciate all of them. I am still finishing up the third post for this series and want to get that done overall. I promise to add some additional comments at the end of that part along with a follow-up article next week regarding some of the feedback.

That said, in this portion of the series I talk about some of the aspects that I love but some others push back on.

Complexity Malifaux
Classic is a complex game, and this is a good thing. As a Henchman for
Wyrd, I had the task and privileged of introducing new players to the
game and teaching them how to play. I have been blessed with a young
daughter who became interested in the game and asked me to teach her how
to play as well. Those who are developing Malifaux V.2 have decided
that complexity is a bad thing and needs to be burned down with fire.
This is something that really disappoints me. Malifaux was not a tough
game to learn, with lots of people capable of learning the rules
themselves. The first rulebook was an absolute nightmare to try and
learn a game from, but it was something that people clearly overcame and
the community grew. I am certainly not going to say the game could not
use some cleaning up, it could use a fair amount as shown by the
errata's released through the years. I enjoyed the complexity in the
game partially because it set Malifaux apart as a more mature miniature
game. This was not a kids game and was not a simple game, but was a game
where you would need to spend a little time to really grasp. I
experienced many demo's where I demonstrated the very simple and
straight forward mechanics of the game, consisting of Action Points
(AP), move, shoot, attack, interact, cast. These simple portions of the
game then built on each-other with the characters in the game, each able
to enhance or break some rules of the game to do something amazing. The
longer players played, the better they became at the game, the more
they enjoyed the game. There is a magic to playing complex games and
mastering a new skill level to playing. There is a balance to winning a
game because you have learned it better, not because you bought the more
expensive model and put it on the table. Those are the strengths of the
complexity of Malifaux, and those are the portions I enjoyed. Much of
the minutia needed to be cleaned up, but that minutia was really only an
issue at the highest levels of player skill, and often came to light
from the tournament scene.

CombinationsMalifaux
Classic is also a game of combinations, which is such a cool aspect to
the game I think many people reference it but do not truly grasp the
nature early on. There are certain combo's in 40K or WHFB that people
learn and make use of, and these are something people really enjoy about
those games. The best players in Warmachine and Hordes learn the
strongest combo's and then repeat those to gain advantages in game. In
Malifaux, every model in the game adds a new permutation of abilities
that create new combo's. This is something that worried many people
because they were afraid they could not master ALL the combo's in the
game. I believe they were correct, they could not master them ALL. What I
love about this aspect of Malifaux is that there were always new
combo's to learn. Adding those new combo's to your virtual bag of tricks
was one thing that advanced a player up the skill ladder of the game.
It also gave constant wow moments to players. I have played a lot of
games, to the point I would guess I have played more than most other
Malifaux players in the world (at least in the top 5%). Even with this
immense scope of Malifaux games and experience across different crews, I
still learned a new trick as recently as Adepticon 2013. That trick
(Thank you to Doug LeSavoy) was with a Master I was very familiar with
and just had not picked up on. That was such a cool moment for me that I
could not wait to try it out in one of my own future games. Those type
of wow moments provide a "puzzle solving" type experience for me in
Malifaux. This is something I saw on Turn 3 of that first game, and
something that persists to this day.

Objective based

I
have talked about this a lot on the podcast and point it out in every
demo I have performed. Malifaux is the first truly objective based game I
have experienced, and its such a refreshing and mature way to approach a
game. Malifaux is not a cooperative game, it is still based on conflict
between crews and there is still combat that occurs in essentially
every game. The real difference in Malifaux was that there were far less
gamers where the number of models you killed, or even the specific
model you killed, actually determined success or failure in the game.
This was something that was not only embraced in the game design (via
objectives) but also in the model design. There was entire crews which
were not highly effective at killing, but could move so quickly or
perform specific tricks in such a way that killing was not necessary.
This is such a cool part of the Malifaux Classic game and really drew
players. This is the first and only game I am aware of where entire
crews could be built around evasion or control and be effective in the
game while not necessarily attacking with weapons or such.

Game Balance

I
found Malifaux to be incredibly well balanced as a game through my time
playing it. There were certainly areas of issue, with some specific
combinations being over powered or some specific Masters being too easy
to use for the "average" player but requiring a higher level of skill to
counter. There were even some negative play experiences in the game
with certain crews and masters that turned people off to the game. I
constantly heard that the game was unbalanced, but truly and completely
disagree with that assessment of the game. Malifaux is balanced for the
strategies in place on a faction to faction level. Individual models are
not equal, and individual masters are not equal. Each model and master
is looked at in a vacuum and then looked at in the crews they would be
hired into to see how they work overall. This is why a 5ss showgirl in a
Collette crew is far different than a 5ss Ronin. Certainly some models
slipped through the play testing process and were more or less powerful
than others, but when looked at from a faction to faction standpoint,
the game was incredibly balanced. Furthermore, the game was built around
choosing your models to play after you knew what your game objectives
are. Then a secondary set of lesser objectives was completely chosen by
the player to fit the crew he or she had already hired. There were
certainly problems (such as the Guild faction as a whole having less
AP), but in my opinion the game was far more balanced than other games
where the latest release was always the best choice to play the game or a
Space Marine was always better than other choices.

Fate Deck

A podcast I listen to is often quoted for the phrase one of the hosts uses a lot, that phrase being "Innovative Mechanics".
Malifaux did away with dice for and instituted a new mechanic for their
game using a deck of playing cards. This is such a nice departure to
me, and something I love about the game. I can honestly say I have
become stuck on this idea even when considering designing my own
miniature game, and I just love the deck idea. A deck of cards provides a
fantastic dynamic in the game through some randomization that is
"controllable", removing the completely random element of dice rolling.
This allows a player to make decisions based on how the turn has
progressed for them so far, and means that only so much good or bad luck
can exist in a specific period of time (that period being the time it
takes to require your deck to be reshuffled). Added to this is a players
hand of cards which allows them to "cheat" in game and manipulate how
their models are impacted in the game. It's such an elegant mechanic to
the game which has been incredibly well implemented. My friend Trevor
prefers dice to cards, and I cannot figure out or understand why.

Avatars

Avatars have received a pretty bad review when all things are looked at with Malifaux. They are not universally utilized within games and they are a real mixed bag when it comes to their design in the game. All avatars are not made equal and this shows across the game. Personally I really like the Avatars and feel they bring an added dimension to the game that I enjoy. At one point in a discussion I was told that the Avatars were not intended to be in every list, but were a nod toward differentiating between Malifaux the Basic game and Malifaux an Advanced game. Avatar manifest requirements are intended to add some additional complexity in the game, while at the same time attempts were made to balance the Avatars against existing non-avatar masters so the game balance would not be thrown off. I have certainly enjoyed playing with the Avatars I have gotten painted, and plan to continue to expand my Avatar collection and get them on the table. Even the ones such as A-Colette that do not seem at all competitive to me seem to be a lot of fun and are something I want to play around with!

**With that I am going to make a cut here and post part 3 on Monday. The article has become very long and I still have about the same amount to say in the final portion as well. On top of that I am out of the more controversial areas of the game which I love but others may not. Check back Monday for the final part.

12 comments:

The complexity angle is certainly my biggest worry on the announced changes. The intricacy and mixture of abilities are what makes the game fun and what makes other things, such as the objective/non-killy gameplay work. Since I haven't seen the rules yet I don't know the scope of "simplification" and what abilities exist as upgrades or how that all works out, but that seems to be the most troublesome part to me. I think some models/crews needed a rework but it's a tricky thing to do. I'll wait and see how it feels to me.

Malifaux's move to its next edition seems like it's being met the same as any other game's move to the next edition. Hopefully the open beta leads to very little division among players, much like Privateer's WM/H betas seemed to have led to a fairly unified player base. As with most system reworks there will be lovers and haters of the new system. I'll wait until the beta closes before I decide where I'm at. I plan on running at least 2 events with the beta rules, achievement leagues, and submitting as much feedback as possible from those events and every other game I play.

As with your first article on 1st edition Malifaux, it's hard to understand why you see 2nd edition as potentially ruining the game. I don't mean this as a criticism so much as an invitation to be more specific about your grievances. I can only assume that as a play-tester you're privy to information that the rest of us are not, as all the information in the podcast interviews seems to indicate that M2E will preserve the game elements you've outline here, albeit with minor modifications. For example, I really like the shared strategies, the potential for bluffing with schemes using misleading scheme counters, and the changing limited scheme pool that prevents people from taking the same schemes every game. This is the same objective-based game we love, but the new mechanics governing the selection of strategies and schemes incentivize flexibility in crew creation. That seems like good design to me.

As for the game's complexity, I'm not convinced that the rewrite will produce a game much simpler than the one we have. Whatever streamlining may go into the initial release, Wyrd is also introducing several other major game elements and bringing others back into play (e.g. it sounds like avatars may be manifesting with greater frequency). While upgrades have thus far been invoked as a means of introducing complexity incrementally, in the long run they could well prove to be a substantial source of complexity once you have a crew with 10-15 upgrade cards on the table. And that's just for one of the crews. Certainly new abilities related to upgrades will be introduced as well, such a Colette's mechanical doves gaining the ability to steal upgrades from opposing models. That's just one example of new design space potentially opening up in M2E. While first edition Malifaux runs on a very solid game "engine," it's due for a bit of cleanup and the less time I spend worrying about awkward rules interactions, the more time I have to spend scheming my way through Malifaux. Like you, Malifaux is by FAR my favorite game, but I'm just not as worried about Wyrd ruining it at this point.

I know that my post can't allay your concerns, but I hope you come to peace with them and that you stay involved with this fantastic game. Its future looks bright (or did someone just cast brilliance on me?). I look forward to your coming articles (and podcasts, I hope).

Thank you for the post. I'm a big fan of the podcast and I've stuck with it since the beginning. I had actually stopped playing Malifaux before book 4 because it stopped being what I was looking for. I still enjoy the content of the show but hearing about the models from the new book just hasn't brought back any interest in the game.

The character driven angle and a setting that allowed a huge variety of different genres really pulled me into the game initially. The thing that really pushed me out of the game is that so many models that are cool and fluffy fell behind as new ones were released. It's weird to me that several podcasts say that the game is well balanced while bursting into laughter at the idea that someone would dare to use an ice golem, crooligan, bad juju... etc.

Admittedly I have only followed a couple of the sources of 2nd edition information so far, but again I'm still not seeing a reason to come back. If only 3 masters per faction are coming in the new book then we are waiting a year and two books to just get back to where the game is now? In addition to the deck of stat cards per faction. The cost to stay in a game I already have models for is going to end up as high as picking up models for a competing skirmish game.

Enjoying this series of blogposts Bill. It really cements my feelings on malifaux classic. I'm having trouble sharing in the optimism and excitement of M2E as other podcasters/players out there. I have strong reasons to believe we share the same concerns and issues with the changes upcoming. I look forward to part 3 and you have my email for discussion.

I think a big reason that I'm nervous about 2e is that the Through the Breach designer is playing such a big role. As I understand it, they brought him in to work on the RPG, and now all of a sudden he has a big say in what's going on in M2E. It seems to me like that's where the whole upgrade system came from, which I am definitely not too happy about.

One of the whole reasons I love Malifaux is because the cards tell everything the character can do - nothing more, nothing less. It's what we do with them that makes the game so interesting, and everyone has access to a singular set of tools.

Now you could say that everyone has access to all the upgrades too, but now we'll have to keep track of who took what and models will sometimes be able to do things and sometimes not, which to me is annoying and just mimics the other games that we left behind for Malifaux in the first place...

I completely agree with the above post about upgrades. It's no accident that games with customizable models like WHFB and 40k place more emphasis on winning the list-building phase with "options" that are often strictly superior to others, whereas with games like Malifaux and Warmachine, list-building emphasizes flexibility and adaptability to changing scenarios. It will be very difficult for the designers at Wyrd to take all combinations of upgrades and model abilities into account, while at the same time it will not take long for netlisting to determine optimal upgrade loadouts. In other words, while customization often sounds like it presents interesting choices, in reality it usually ends up ceding those choices to prevailing internet "wisdom" and eroding the emphasis on in-game player decisions.

While I'm optimistic about second edition overall, I remain skeptical about the upgrade system and prefer the elegance and game balance that comes from all information pertaining to a model being listed on one card.

I've been out of the Malifaux scene for a fair while now. My current understanding is that Wyrd produces fate decks for their game and I imagine they still sell them separately on their site. I believe they moved to actively stop anyone from independently producing and selling fate decks compatible with Malifaux over the past year. I think you can still get some as prizes and swag at conventions, but am unsure.